Characterization of Cryogenic SiPM Down to 6.5 K

Abstract

SiPM operation at very low temperatures has the potential to improve detector systems for experiments at cryogenic temperatures. We characterized electrical and optical properties of a commercially available cryogenic SiPM over a temperature range of 6.5 K-286 K, such as breakdown voltage, quenching resistance, gain, pulse waveform, photon detection efficiency and dark count rate. We observed a non-linear temperature dependence of the breakdown voltage and a small change of the pulse waveform at low temperatures. The SiPM gain and maximum allowed overvoltage decrease at low temperatures, however, stable operation down to 6.5 K has been demonstrated. Furthermore, the feasibility of assembling a detector with a plastic scintillator was studied.

Scintillation detectors with silicon photomultiplier readout in a dilution refrigerator at temperatures down to 0.2 K

“…The breakdown voltage measured at various temperatures is shown in figure 3, right. Between 150 K and 300 K, a linear decrease with temperature is visible, as reported in [7,18]. The dashed red line matches the linear temperature coefficient of 54 mV/K around room temperature specified by Hamamatsu [19].…”

“…Examples are the dark matter experiments DARWIN [1] or DarkSide-20k [2], nEXO [3] looking for neutrino-less double beta decay, or MEG II [4] searching for the charged lepton flavour violating decay of muons. The characterization of SiPMs has thus been done at room temperature [5] and down to liquid-nitrogen temperatures (77 K) [6,7].…”

Scintillation detectors with silicon photomultiplier readout in a dilution refrigerator at temperatures down to 0.2 K

“…Examples are the dark matter experiments DARWIN [1] or DarkSide-20k [2], nEXO [3] looking for neutrino-less double beta decay, or MEGII [4] searching for the charged lepton flavour violating decay of muons. The characterization of SiPMs has thus been done at room temperature [5] and down to liquid-nitrogen temperatures (77 K) [6,7].…”